Angrily, the Marshal dismissed her and demanded of Alicia, “All right, what is this?”
She beckoned him to lean close to her, softly whispering into his ear, “I found a note at my door this morning, from your daughter. Last night, during dinner, Yugh Delganor spoke of marriage to Genevieve.”
“Did he indeed?” said the Marshal, eyebrows rising, eyes gleaming. “Well, I’d said as much to—”
The Duchess’s hand across his mouth silenced him. She shook her head, motioning at the room around him, then whispering again:
“Genevieve went into a panic, sir. I believe she is in love with someone else.”
“She what!” He turned an ugly red and rose with such force that his chair went crashing behind him. “She had no business being in love with anyone!” he cried, stalking away from the table, his napkin flapping on his chest.
She got up to take him by the arm, shush him, tug him back into his chair, and pat him on the knee as she murmured, “I don’t think it’s a business at all, sir. Businesses we control. Love, we cannot. At any rate, she was gravely upset by last night’s dinner, so upset that she has run away.”
She drew him close again, putting her lips within an inch of his ear. “She thought, quite rightly I believe, that since the Prince had not actually spoken to you or proposed to her, and since she had not given him any encouragement whatsoever, no promises could be considered broken.”
“And who is she in love with?” snarled the Marshal.
“She didn’t say she was in love with anyone, but I think from my own observation it is probably Colonel Leys.”
The Marshal shouted, “I’ll have the bastard shot! So he went with her, did he?”
The Duchess gave up any attempt at silence. So long as the Marshal stayed away from the subject of the Prince’s possible proposal, he might rave as he liked. “I’d be surprised if he even knew about it, much less went with her.”
“So you say!” He summoned a footman and demanded that Colonel Leys be summoned, without delay. Then he turned on the Duchess once more, saying sneeringly:
“So why are you here, Your Grace? Come to beg forgiveness for her?”
“Not at all, sir. I merely read her note, and since I knew you would be upset to find her gone, I came to tell you what had happened.”
“After it happened,” he shouted.
The Duchess said frostily, “I suggest you moderate your battlefield bellow, Marshal. We are equal in rank, and I do not take it kindly. Besides, you do not want this overheard . . .” again she gestured at the room around them, “. . . by every servant in the house. Neither my butler nor I check the door for messages during the night hours, nor have you any right to assume so.”
He said through clenched teeth, “Well, I’ll let her know what to expect. I’ll have her run down by nightfall, I assure you, and all your good offices will not win my forgiveness. She may well have upset some long-considered plan of the Lord Paramount. She may have been brought here for this particular reason. I don’t suppose that occurred to you?”
He glared at her, barely noticing how her expression hardened, how her lips thinned into an angry line. She rose, went to the tall windows opening on the terrace and flung one of them wide, sailing out through it. The Marshal followed her into the open air, steam rising from his forehead.
The Duchess turned to confront him. “Tell me, Marshal, does your daughter have a mind?”
“Of course she has a mind. I would have thought until now, a rather good one.”
“But she is forbidden to use it, is that it?”
“She is certainly not allowed to use it to disobey me!”
“Oh. Had you forbidden her to fall in love with Aufors Leys? I had thought it was you who introduced them.”
Fuming, the Marshal leaned across the stone baluster and spoke into the air. “Madam, you are serpent worded. Your sentences fairly slither. You know full well what I mean, and you know more than that. You know this . . . defection may have set my own life at risk.”